A continuous population of variable stars up to about 1.5 mag above the horizontal branch?

Increasing samples of pulsating variable stars populating the classical instability strip from the horizontal branch to a few magnitudes brighter are being found in several Local Group galaxies, irrespective of the galaxy morphological type. We will review the observational scenario focusing in particular on the Anomalous Cepheids and related objects.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, invited review in JENAM 2003, "Minisymposium: Asteroseismology and Stellar Evolution", Communications in Asteroseismology, in pres

Analysis of navigation pattern in the sport of rowing

The effect of weather and environmental conditions on sports has been extensively studied over the last few years (Pezzoli et al., 2010). Based upon the studies of Lobozewicz (1981) and of Kay and Vamplew (2002), Pezzoli and Cristofori (2008) have studied the impact of some specific environmental parameters over different sports using a particular impact index divided into five classes. This analysis clearly shows that most of the outdoor sport activities are strongly influenced by the variation of meteorological parameters. However the impact of meteorological conditions on outdoor sport activities has not yet been extensively studied. The aim of this research is to show that an accurate assessment of wind and wave parameters enables decisive improvements in both training and race strategy planning. Furthermore this analysis provide a very innovative working method for the applied sport research. The work has been based on in-situ measurements of both environmental and performance parameters (wind direction, wind velocity, boat speed and stroke rate) made over different classes and in different race conditions during the 2009 FISA World Championship (Poznan, Poland). In particular a detailed environmental analysis was performed by measuring the wind direction, the wind speed and by evaluating the significant wave height and the wave peak period for each class during the semi-final phase and the final phase. It should be noted that, since wind is a key parameter affecting not only the boat speed but also the race strategy, the assessment of the wind velocity and of the wind direction has been made in connection with the boat movement. The comparison between coupled wind-wave data, boat speed and stroke rate evidently demonstrates that only crews that managed the adaption to changing in the environmental conditions from semi-final to final phase of the race, were able to get better results. References Kay, J., & Vamplew, W. (2002) Weather beaten: sport in the British climate. London: Ed. Mainstream Publishing. Lobozewicz, T. (1981) Meteorology in sport. Frankfurt: Ed. Sportverlag. Pezzoli, A,, Moncalero, M., Boscolo, A., Cristofori, E., Giacometto, F., Gastaldi, S., & Vercelli, G. (2010) The meteo-hydrological analysis and the sport performance: which are the connections? The case of the XXI Winter Olympic Games, Vancouver 2010, Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 50: 19-20. Pezzoli, A., & Cristofori, E. (2008) Analisi, previsioni e misure meteorologiche applicate agli sport equestri, in: 10th Congress "New findings in equine practices, Druento: Centro Internazionale del Cavallo Ed., p.38-4

Robustness of solutions to the capacitated facility location problem with uncertain demand

We investigate the properties of robust solutions of the Capacitated Facility Location Problem with uncertain demand. We show that the monotonic behavior of the price of robustness is not guaranteed, and therefore that one cannot discriminate among alternative robust solutions by simply relying on the trade-off price-vs-robustness. Furthermore, we report a computational study on benchmark instances from the literature and on instances derived from a real-world application, which demonstrates the validity in practice of our findings

Vehicle routing problems with drones equipped with multi-package payload compartments

The vehicle routing problem with drones (VRP-D) consists of designing combined truck-drone routes and schedules to serve a set of customers with specific requests and time constraints. In this paper, VRP-D is extended to include a fleet of drones equipped with multi-package payload compartments to serve more customers on a single trip. Moreover, a drone can return to a truck, different from the one from which it started, to swap its depleted battery and/or to pick up more packages. This problem, denoted as VRP-D equipped with multi-package payload compartments (VRP-D-MC), aims to maximize total profit. In this work, an adaptive multi-start simulated annealing (AMS-SA) metaheuristic algorithm is proposed to efficiently solve this problem. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the current state-of-the-art algorithms for VRP-D in terms of solution quality. Extensive analyses have been conducted to provide managerial insights. The analyses carried out show (i) the benefits of using drones equipped with different compartment configurations, (ii) the incremental total profit obtainable using a combined truck-drone fleet rather than a fleet of trucks, (iii) the benefit of swapping drone battery while picking up the items to deliver, and (iv) the impact of the packages load on the consumption energy of battery drone. It is also demonstrated that the different intensification and diversification mechanisms adopted improve the convergence of the traditional SA

Dynamic Collection Scheduling Using Remote Asset Monitoring: Case Study in the UK Charity Sector

Remote sensing technology is now coming onto the market in the waste collection sector. This technology allows waste and recycling receptacles to report their fill levels at regular intervals. This reporting enables collection schedules to be optimized dynamically to meet true servicing needs in a better way and so reduce transport costs and ensure that visits to clients are made in a timely fashion. This paper describes a real-life logistics problem faced by a leading UK charity that services its textile and book donation banks and its high street stores by using a common fleet of vehicles with various carrying capacities. Use of a common fleet gives rise to a vehicle routing problem in which visits to stores are on fixed days of the week with time window constraints and visits to banks (fitted with remote fill-monitoring technology) are made in a timely fashion so that the banks do not become full before collection. A tabu search algorithm was developed to provide vehicle routes for the next day of operation on the basis of the maximization of profit. A longer look-ahead period was not considered because donation rates to banks are highly variable. The algorithm included parameters that specified the minimum fill level (e.g., 50%) required to allow a visit to a bank and a penalty function used to encourage visits to banks that are becoming full. The results showed that the algorithm significantly reduced visits to banks and increased profit by up to 2.4%, with the best performance obtained when the donation rates were more variable

Cost-benefit analysis of different solutions for sustainable irrigation in Fucino Plain (Italy)

n/

Temporal separation of replication and recombination requires the intra-S checkpoint

In response to DNA damage and replication pausing, eukaryotes activate checkpoint pathways that prevent genomic instability by coordinating cell cycle progression with DNA repair. The intra-S-phase checkpoint has been proposed to protect stalled replication forks from pathological rearrangements that could result from unscheduled recombination. On the other hand, recombination may be needed to cope with either stalled forks or double-strand breaks resulting from hydroxyurea treatment. We have exploited fission yeast to elucidate the relationship between replication fork stalling, loading of replication and recombination proteins onto DNA, and the intra-S checkpoint. Here, we show that a functional recombination machinery is not essential for recovery from replication fork arrest and instead can lead to nonfunctional fork structures. We find that Rad22-containing foci are rare in S-phase cells, but peak in G2 phase cells after a perturbed S phase. Importantly, we find that the intra-S checkpoint is necessary to avoid aberrant strand-exchange events during a hydroxyurea block